As a matter of heart…

Tag: Humans of NY

This day. Sigh. I’ve got big plans for today, and they’re all about me. I’ve never spent this much time being this selfish. In the past when this day hit, and I was single I’d be spending all of my energy, time and money on trying to make my friends feel good but as I’ve said in a post that I haven’t quite published yet1, I left all my fucks with 34 year old me.

It’s easy to have a lot of feels on a day like today, when you’re someone who has a lot of feels in general. I’ve been numbing myself with work, work and more work2, and it’s been really great… but then you come across something like this post from Humans of NY, and you can’t help but call yourself out on your own bullshit.

This guy made me realize that I’ve been so lucky. So fucking lucky to have fallen in love as many times as I have, and to have had almost as many people fall in love with me. It doesn’t matter that they didn’t last. At least today, I won’t worry about that. Today I’ll celebrate the fact that I have ever felt that love at all because it could honestly be worse: I could be 35 years old, and have never felt movie-love like I have so, very, many times before.

(Rosario, Argentina)

“I’m thirty-four and I haven’t felt real love yet. Sometimes I think: ‘Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’ll never get to that point.’ I’ve had a couple of relationships. But a woman has never really made me feel jealous. And I’ve never felt that I would do anything to be with another person. I’ve read about real love in books, and seen it in movies, but I’ve never felt it. Like in the Titanic movie– they are trying so hard to be together. That is hard for me to understand. I’m not sure what that would feel like. There is one movie with Winona Ryder where she is about to join a monastery, but then she meets a gardener, and she kisses him, and suddenly she feels real love. I’m not sure what love feels like. But I’m guessing I’ll know when I feel it. Like Winona Ryder knew.”
— Humans of NY

I’m also lucky to feel as amazing as I feel these days. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you can’t change. The old me would still be sulking about my last big break-up, and holding on to god-knows-what as if holding on to the pain was the only way to prove that my love was real3. It serves no one. Get up. Stay up. But it’s also okay to fall and feel sad sometimes; don’t beat yourself up if that happens.

There is a part of me that is terrified of falling in love with someone new. I always manage to find someone amazing when I feel this good, only to inevitably realize that my wounds weren’t healed enough just as I really start to feel something for that person… and then it all goes to shit. I worry that my old pattern will simply repeat. I know what I need to do4, but that doesn’t make the act of doing it any easier when you’re in the moment and all your emotions are drowning you.

Anyway, there’s no sense in worrying about that now. This is the present. And today, I get to do some of my favourite things that I am going to keep private because I can. Just know that each moment of this day is going to bring me pure joy.